


jon v the circus

by fleurmatisse



Series: seer verse [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mild Gore, psychic jon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25599841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurmatisse/pseuds/fleurmatisse
Summary: it starts with calliope music and ends with an evil clown. as these things do.an au based on the show medium, in which jon is our allison dubois
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker
Series: seer verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1855468
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **trigger warning for mild gore and references to self harm and skin picking and a canonical clown**  
>  i wrote a post before this one that happens after the events of this one: [here](https://fleurmatisse.tumblr.com/post/624396024300158976/seer-the-tma-medium-au-you-never-knew-you-wanted) it's pre-jongerry and order of reading doesn't particularly matter  
> part 2 will be up either tomorrow or next wednesday

jon hears calliope music all the time. it’s distant, almost unnoticeable, but it’s  _ there _ and he’s  _ noticed _ , and it is slowly driving him insane. he thinks it might be getting louder, or it could just be that the apartment is quieter now that georgie has moved out. 

he goes to work and he hears the music. he comes home, and still it follows him. he doesn’t go many other places; maybe that’s why he can’t seem to shake it from his ears—it knows where he’s going to be and waits.

it’s ridiculous. he knows it’s ridiculous. but it’d gotten so bad the other day he’d asked sasha if she heard it. she’d cocked her head and listened for a few seconds and looked surprised before she said, “you know, i think i caught a few notes. must be a circus in town somewhere. you know calliopes can be heard from miles away?”

jon didn’t know this, but he tries to take that as the explanation, even if when he has a free moment he looks it up and there are no circuses in town.

when he starts dreaming the music—no longer just a calliope but a whole orchestra playing jaunty, taunting music—he knows it’s not just in his head. it all feels too real to just be his imagination, even if his imagination does run away with him some days.

he’s certain he could never imagine the feeling of peeling off his own skin so clearly. the sensation sticks with him for the rest of the day. when he catches himself picking at an old scar on his jaw he nearly has a panic attack.

he has the dream again, and again, until finally he’s no longer the performer but the audience, a single person in a gallery of stone, flashlight aimed at the stage and the man standing in its spotlight. he calls out and the man on stage grins, too wide, too toothy, not nearly enough skin on his cheeks. he wakes up screaming and he’s almost glad georgie isn’t there to be woken up with him.

he thinks, after that first sighting of him, that he recognized the man on the stage. after the fourth time he’s positive he knows who it is, and for the first time he seeks out tim stoker on his own.

tim is not hard to find, seeing as he comes by the library every other day to pick up sasha for lunch (the alternating days sasha goes to the publishing house to retrieve him), and he seems delighted when jon intercepts him on his way through the building.

“you don’t have a mysterious and yet completely real reason to be in your office right now?” he says after jon asks to speak to him.

“is your brother a fan of theater?” jon replies, too tired to try to stick to social conventions. his skin has been crawling all day, and he’s managed to open a spot just beside his nose that stings when he moves any part of his face. 

tim makes a face like he isn’t sure if jon is joking. “not really. and if you’re planning to ask him out, i hate to break it to you, but danny is straight.”

jon huffs, shaking his head. “no, that’s not—i don’t want to date him; i keep having dreams about him.”

tim’s expression grows more skeptical. “right...and what happens in these dreams? do i even want to know?”

“he tears the skin off his face while you watch,” jon says. “i think he’s in danger.”

“and that has something to do with the theater.”

“it happens in a theater. it feels like it’s underground or—buried? it’s hard to describe.”

“okay. so my brother is going to find an underground theater to tear his face off in front of me? that doesn’t really sound like him. or any sane person, really.”

“i know that,” jon snaps. this was a stupid idea. he’d kind of started to like tim, and now tim was going to think he was insane forever. “forget i said anything.”

tim catches his arm before he can escape. “you really think something’s going to happen to danny?”

jon studies him for a second, searching for a sign he’s being mocked. tim just looks concerned. jon resigns himself to losing tim’s friendship as he extricates his wrist from tim’s grip and says, “i think he’s going to die. maybe worse.”

tim lets him go this time. 

jon has the dream again, and again, and again 

tim calls him in the middle of the night. “you were right.”

jon sits up in bed. “is danny—”

“he’s alive.” tim laughs. it’s a hollow, wet kind of laugh. “he’s—i followed him. have you ever heard of urbex?”

jon can hear an ambulance. “no, i haven’t. tim—”

“the royal opera house. that’s the theater. it’s not underground, though, not sure where you got that one.”

the ambulance is getting louder. 

“tim, are you okay? is that ambulance coming to you?”

“oh, i’m fine. the ambulance is for danny.” tim laughs again, and it’s a sound jon never wants to hear repeated. “he was cutting into his face when i found him. i had to drag him out here, and now he’s not waking up. he’s breathing, though, so at least he’s not, you know.”

the siren drowns out anything else tim might have said before it cuts off abruptly and unfamiliar voices start talking. tim tells them he found danny with a straight razor and how long he’s been unconscious, that he didn’t see anything that might’ve caused that. jon gets out of bed while he talks, puts on the first semi-acceptable clothes he finds, and when tim starts talking to him again, he’s carrying his shoes to the front door. he gets tim to tell him what hospital they’re taking danny to and promises to meet him there.


	2. Chapter 2

it’s unsettling to see tim quiet. it’s unsettling to see him with blood on his hands and a lost expression on his face. he watches jon approach like he doesn’t even see him until jon speaks, and then he sags like his strings have been cut. luckily, he was already sitting down.

jon isn’t the best at comfort, but he sits with tim, ignoring the people yelling around them until someone in scrubs calls for him. danny’s facial surgery went well, they think his wounds will heal with minimal scarring, but he still hadn’t regained consciousness before the surgery and they couldn’t find an explanation. tim is advised to clean up before he goes to see his brother. jon follows the signs to the bathroom with tim’s red-tinged sleeve in his grasp. tim washes his hands with the same dazed look he’s had since jon showed up. once the blood is gone, jon walks with him to danny’s room. as soon as tim sees his brother, the haze disappears. 

tim is not a quiet crier. 

jon steps into the hall to give him privacy. as he shuts the door, he sees a flash of something beside danny’s bed, red and white and—smiling. whispering in danny’s ear. jon looks through the crack of the door, and the smiling face looks back, puts a finger to its lips, and disappears. jon stares at the space it previously occupied until a duo of conversing nurses walk by and startle him out of it.

his blood feels cold.

danny wakes up an hour later with no memory of breaking into the opera house. he’s unconscious again not long after that. the nurses send tim and jon home now that danny’s seemingly no longer in mortal danger. in front of the hospital, tim is back to looking lost.

“i don’t know how i’m supposed to get to sleep,” he says.

jon isn’t getting any more sleep. it’s almost sunrise now. he keeps seeing that face. “what i have to tell you isn’t going to help any.”

“is there time to get alcohol into my system first?” tim asks.

“i’m not sure,” jon answers.

“how about the commute to my flat?”

“it can hold until then,” jon determines. “you’ll call me?”

“you’re not coming with me?” the way tim says it is almost a joke.

“oh,” jon says. “i can.”

“you don’t really have to.”

“i’m coming with you.”

“well, if you insist.”

tim doesn’t drink anything stronger than water. jon accepts a glass and lingers awkwardly in the kitchen while tim changes out of the clothes he’d decided on the ride back to burn the first chance he gets. he comes back in a loose-fitting, pattern clashing outfit and drops onto the couch, heaving a sigh as he tilts his head back. 

“alright, bad news, lay it on me,” he says.

“are you sure you don’t want to sleep?”

“jon.” 

the serious tone again, like when he asked if jon really thought danny was in danger. 

jon sits on the other end of the couch, still holding the glass of water in both hands. he stares at it, resting on his knees, instead of looking at tim. he doesn’t talk about these things. “i saw something in the hospital with danny. a—well, i think it was a ghost. i’ve seen ghosts before, but this one felt...wrong. and it was talking to him.”

tim is quiet for a long moment. “are you telling me my brother is like you? psychic or whatever it is you are.”

“i don’t know,” jon says. “i don’t know if he was hearing the clown or if it was just there—“

“wait,” tim says, sitting up straight. jon looks up at the movement. “a clown?”

“i’m—yes? it looked like a clown; it had the makeup.”

tim gets up and disappears down the hall again. jon sets his glass on a coaster on the coffee table in front of him and prepares to be kicked out—this, telling tim it was a clown, this is the final straw. tim comes back and shoves a paper at him. 

“did it look like this?”

jon takes the paper and looks. a chill runs down his spine. the red on the cheeks, the too-wide smile. “where did you get this?”

“danny keeps drawing them,” tim says, sinking into the couch again. he sounds more tired than he has the whole time jon’s been with him. jon puts the drawing face down beside his glass. “they’re in all his notes on the opera house; i thought it was weird but then he told me about joseph grimaldi—this _literal_ _clown_ —performing at the old theater it was built on.” tim grabs the paper and crumples it before throwing it across the room. “i was _really_ hoping you wouldn’t recognize it.”

“sorry?” jon says when tim puts his head in his hands. 

“it’s not like you set an evil nineteenth century clown ghost on my brother,” tim says, muffled by his palms. “so what now?”

“i don’t know,” jon says. he says that a lot, doesn’t he? “i think...maybe we have to talk to danny.”

tim sets his chin on closed fists, looking at jon skeptically. “even though he doesn’t remember what happened?”

“maybe he will once he’s had some rest?” jon suggests. at the mere mention of rest, jon yawns. tim catches it immediately. “sorry.”

tim waves the apology away on a second yawn. “fuck me, i really didn’t want to go to sleep.” he smiles at jon, like  _ what can you do _ . it doesn’t match the fear rolling off him in waves. “you should probably get back to your girlfriend, right?”

“oh, um, well,” jon says. he fidgets with the outer seam of his pants, bunched together at the bend of his knee. “no, i don’t have to get back. i don’t, uh, have a girlfriend to get back to. anymore.”

“oh, shit, sorry,” tim says. “sasha didn’t say anything.”

jon smiles.  _ what can you do.  _ “i didn’t say anything to sasha.”

“you mean i know something before she does for once?” tim says, almost sounding excited. 

“just because i didn’t tell her doesn’t mean she doesn’t already know,” jon replies. 

tim accepts that fact with a nod. he doesn’t move to get off the couch. maybe jon should leave anyway? 

“i don’t want to keep seeing it,” tim says, so quiet jon could pretend he didn’t hear him. tim looks at him, though, and now his expression matches the fear. jon holds his gaze for a second longer than he usually would before he nods. he’s seen what tim saw; he doesn’t want to see it again either, and it’s not even his brother. 

“you know,” he says to his knees once again, “as part of my...abilities, i can keep you from dreaming. i could—stay. while you sleep.”

tim lets out a breath. “yeah?”

jon nods, glancing at tim, who’s staring across the room now. 

“you’re a terrible liar, jon,” he says. “but i wouldn’t be opposed to the company.”

it hasn’t been that long since jon went to bed with someone, but it feels like an eternity. he and georgie had had established sides of the bed (jon against the wall, with georgie between him and the door) but with tim he hesitates to even sit on the mattress until tim has mostly settled. 

“i’m not going to bite,” tim says when he notices jon’s hesitance. “i’m far too tired for that.”

jon huffs and gets under the covers. tim is still, facing away from jon for a moment before he turns onto his back. 

“is it too early in our friendship to ask about cuddling?”

jon considers. “i suppose not.”

“i think i could do with being held after a night like i’ve had,” tim says.

“i think i could do with holding you,” jon says.

“has anyone told you you’re a bit of a shit?” tim asks, already moving to meet jon in the middle of the mattress. 

“a few times,” jon says, circling his arms around tim’s shoulders as tim rests his head under his chin. he feels it when tim sighs, warm breath on his neck. 

“it’s nice,” tim says, sleep-slurred. jon isn’t sure whether he means their current position or jon being a shit; he’d ask, but tim is almost definitely asleep and jon’s not far behind him. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this part has a considerable amount of self harm discussion and the aftermath of it so please proceed with caution

it’s a strange turn of events for jon to be woken by somebody else’s nightmare. he gets flashes of it in his sleep: blood and shouting and fighting a razor out of danny’s hand. it intersperses in his own dream of that clown dancing on the stage. between the two dreams he wakes up before tim, who’s moved away from him, curled up facing the opposite side of the room. 

jon wishes he hadn’t been bullshitting about blocking dreams. he sits up and reaches out to touch tim’s shoulder, but before he can make contact, tim jumps awake with a sharp intake of breath. jon yanks his hand back. 

“tim?” he says instead.

“that’s me,” tim says, rubbing at his eyes.

“i’m—“ 

jon’s phone saves him from figuring out what he is mid-sentence (sorry, probably). he’d forgotten to take it out of his pocket before they went to sleep, and now he and tim have to push all the covers away to find where exactly it’s ringing from. 

tim is the one who grabs it, handing it over after a glance at the screen. “sasha.”

_ shit _ . jon forgot to call in to work.

“hello?” he answers as tim gets up.

“well you’re clearly not dead, so there had better be a good reason you didn’t tell elias you weren’t coming in, because he came down to ask  _ me _ instead,” sasha says. 

jon winces. “sorry, i—”

“d’you want any coffee?” tim asks in what is a quiet voice for him. sasha hears it anyway.

“was that tim?” she asks. before jon can answer, she’s continued, “you skived off work to hang out with  _ tim _ ? without me?”

“i didn’t  _ plan _ it,” jon says, defensive in the face of sasha’s offended tone. he follows tim to the kitchen, where the coffeemaker is gurgling to life and tim is leaning on the counter. “there was a situation last night—” at this, tim looks up. jon gives him a questioning look— _ am i telling sasha or are you?  _ he hopes it says. “—and we didn’t get to bed until morning.”

“what kind of situation?” sasha probes. “is everything okay?”

“that’s to be decided by tim, i think?” jon says. tim holds out his hand, and jon gives him the phone with a not insignificant amount of relief. he puts sasha on speaker before he relays a barebones version of what happened with danny, minus the ghost clown and jon’s dreams.

“oh my god,” sasha says. “i’d never think danny would do something like that.”

“me neither,” tim says. “and i can’t decide if i want him to remember more or not.”

sasha hums. “do you want me to go with you to the hospital today?”

“you’re already one librarian down,” tim says, which is noticeably not a no. 

jon picks at the skin around his nails; if sasha goes to the hospital, he’s not sure how he can ask danny about the clown. he supposes tim could distract her, which would be weird because jon has never met danny, so why would he want to spend time with him alone in the hospital? maybe he could just tell her about his dreams and the ghosts and the feelings. tim seemed to take it in stride...but his brother was in danger. 

“martin can cover for me for a while,” sasha says, already sounding like she’s made up her mind. “tell me what time to meet you and i’ll be there.”

“i was thinking of going as soon as i’ve had some coffee,” tim says, almost a question when he meets jon’s eyes. jon nods. he could do with some tea, but he doesn’t need any if tim wants to go already. he’s accustomed to odd sleeping hours by now. “so in the next half hour?”

“i’ll talk to martin,” sasha says. “see you soon.”

“see you,” tim says and gives jon his phone back after sasha’s ended the call. he answers jon’s question before he’s even asked it. “sasha’s never said anything about you being psychic, either.”

“outside of my grandmother when i was very young, you’re the only person i’ve told,” jon replies. 

“and if danny hadn’t been in trouble,” tim says, trailing off. jon offers a small smile; no, he wouldn’t have told anyone. “i’m glad you told me. and not just because you probably saved my brother’s life. i can’t imagine carrying something like that as a secret.”

jon shrugs, looks away from the openness of tim’s face. he can already feel the wave of gratitude and sympathy and something warm that he can’t quite pinpoint; it makes him prickly to see it, too. “i think your coffee’s done.”

“thank god,” tim says. “i haven’t stayed up this late since i was fresh out of uni.”

as promised, they leave as soon as tim has finished his coffee. apparently martin was agreeable to sasha’s request, because she’s already at the hospital when they arrive. she takes tim’s hand as they go in and holds it the whole time they’re in the elevator, roping jon into their light conversation even though she’d given him a searching look when she saw he had also tagged along. 

as they near danny’s room, jon starts to feel something like dread. he almost stops tim from opening the door, but that would be strange to do in front of sasha, no matter what he suspects she might know, and so he watches tim grab the handle with bated breath. the door swings open, and danny is awake, and the right half of his face is covered in blood.

“i’ll get a nurse,” sasha says as tim rushes into the room to grab danny’s hands before they can do more damage. jon knows tim is strong, that he kayaks and rock climbs and is generally athletic—but danny does those things, too, and tim, pleading with his brother to stop, to calm down, is struggling to keep his nails from his skin.

from danny’s bedside, joseph grimaldi smiles.

jon adds his own hands to the struggle. “danny,” he says, voice raised over both stokers, “this isn’t you. you know this isn’t you. you don’t have to listen to him.”

danny’s eyes snap to jon, and for a moment, he pauses, stops fighting, and jon takes that hesitation to push.

“joseph grimaldi, the clown that performed at covent garden, he’s been speaking to you,” he says. he feels the confusion spike through danny’s anger at their interruption, followed swiftly by denial, a clear  _ he’s crazy _ as his arms tense to fight again. jon tightens his grip. “i’m not crazy. it started with dreams, didn’t it? dreams where you would go onstage to an audience of stone and there would be a razor waiting for you, and it was so tempting, but you would never.”

tim is looking between danny and jon like it’s a spectator sport, white-knuckling danny’s wrists.

“until he started whispering to you, and then it felt inevitable,” jon says. “like fate, like this would be your magnum opus; all you had to do was pick up the razor and you could live on forever, but that’s not you, danny, you  _ know _ it isn’t you. you don’t want to do this.”

danny still stares at jon as if he’s crazy, but he hasn’t tried to pull his hands away, either. before he can voice a conclusion, sasha and two nurses come into the room and briskly shoo jon and tim away from danny’s bed. sasha grabs both of them by the arm and huddles them out to the hall while the nurses staunch the bleeding in danny’s face.

“he’ll be okay,” sasha says with such certainty that tim doesn’t hesitate in nodding. she nods back and then looks at their hands. “let’s get you both cleaned up.”

danny asks to speak to jon when he comes out of his sedation haze that afternoon. jon had gone to work to replace sasha for the rest of the day, but he goes to the hospital once he clocks out, and danny is still awake and aware enough to not only see him but to ask tim and sasha to give them a minute alone.

when tim hesitates, danny sighs and says, slightly muffled from the way he’s hardly moving his mouth, “if i start tearing at my face again, i’m sure jon will yell for you.”

tim looks to jon for confirmation and only gets up after jon agrees that he will yell if something happens. 

“you can treat me to something from the vending machine,” sasha says.

“finally you take my offers to be your sugar daddy seriously,” tim replies as the door shuts behind them.

jon catches danny rolling his eyes as he sits in the chair sasha had been occupying. danny gets to the point before jon can make small talk.

“how did you know about the dreams?” he asks.

“i had the same dreams,” jon answers.

“from grimaldi?”

“from you, i think,” jon says. danny furrows his brows. “or maybe someone—something? watching out for you?” 

if anything, danny looks more skeptical. he looks so much like tim, it might be funny under different circumstances.

“it’s not like i got an instruction manual for psychic powers when i was born,” jon gripes.

danny’s skepticism breaks into a small smile that turns into a wince. “i guess i can’t fault you for that.”

“you believe me, then?” jon says after a pause.

“i don’t know,” danny says. “when i think about what i did...it doesn’t feel like me doing it. but then how do i keep myself from doing it again if it wasn’t really me to begin with?”

jon considers. “therapy?” he suggests. “i’ve heard it does wonders for recognizing thought patterns. would probably help to recognize if grimaldi started talking to you again.”

danny nods, and they lapse into silence for a moment before he says, “you don’t...see him here, do you?”

“no,” jon says immediately. he’d seen plenty of ghosts on his way here, but none of them were clowns. “and, as far as i know, he can’t physically hurt you.”

danny nods again. “thank you. for all of it.”

“oh, um, anytime,” jon says, holding back a wince.

danny huffs like he wants to laugh. “i can see why tim likes you. i’m sure he’s waiting at the door if you want to go.”

“well,” jon says, hesitating before danny gives him the same  _ i see right through you _ look tim has given him any time he’s claimed to be too busy to go out for lunch. “if you start hearing grimaldi again, tim has my number and we can—figure something out.”

danny thanks him again and jon makes his escape. gratitude—he never knows what to do with it. 

tim is waiting at the door with sasha, splitting a bag of crisps between them. she goes to sit with danny again while jon relays that he hasn’t seen grimaldi again and that tim can pass his number on if danny starts having trouble again. tim insists on pulling him into a crushing hug before he goes; jon doesn’t hate it as much as he huffs about it.

he gets back to his empty apartment without incident, makes himself dinner, and falls asleep before eight. when the dream comes, it grips him tight and doesn’t let him wake up until it’s over. grimaldi is on the stage again, but this time it isn’t danny with him; the lights go up and reveal an entire cast of ghosts, all moving so jarringly jon can’t place any of their faces but he can feel them staring. somewhere a calliope is playing so loud he can’t hear anything else, out of place with the strange dance happening in front of him. one by one, the ghosts exit the stage until only one remains.

it’s dressed like a ringmaster, and it spins and spins and spins, so fast there’s no way it could be looking at jon and yet it is, he can feel the weight of its gaze, and the calliope swells before going silent so quickly it makes him feel seasick.

“hello, jon,” the ghost says with a thousand cheerful voices. “i see you.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! if you want to see more, subscribe to the series for future updates or follow me on tumblr @ fleurmatisse, where i might share more of the au that doesn't fit in fic form :)


End file.
